It is a big challenge to edit a modern encyclopedia in Applied Plant Science because this field ranges from molecular analysis of genes of biotechnological importance to aspects of biodiversity, agriculture, and ecological management tasks. Therefore, encyclopedias are designed either as a lexicon with short entries in alphabetical order or as collections of review articles in a book series. In the latter case these reviews contain 10–25 pages including a list of the most relevant recent papers. However, a lexicon reader will browse through the book to find an explanation of a key word from an ideally complete list of entries. Therefore, in a good lexicon the accessibility of the relevant information is based on the strict alphabetical order of the entries, whereas in serial encyclopedias the reader will be guided to the relevant information, not from the book itself, but from the result of a literature research. The three volumes reviewed here are a mixture of both: the entries are in an alphabetized list, but the entries are short review papers with a length of 4–10 pages, including a short list of publications for further reading.
The whole field of applied plant science is divided into 40 major entries, which have a subset of 2–15 subentries (articles). Each article is written by a competent author and the editor has worked very hard to harmonise the character, the extension, and the type of presentation of these articles. All these short reviews that I have read are of the best quality. The presentation is clear, concise, and excellent. The schemes (including a small number of colour plates) are very informative and easy to read. However, in some cases the list for further reading does not contain the most important key papers, but rather lists text books that do not contain significantly more information than is presented in the chapter. I can state that this new type of encyclopedia has the advantage that the entries contain much more information than would a lexicon, although the list of relevant topics is fairly complete.
However, the accessibility of the information is really difficult. Although in the foreword the editor explains how the reader will find the appropriate location where the message is hidden, very often the reader will find this page only after having browsed through many entries. Let us demonstrate this excursion by an example. The reader might be interested in how ozone acts on plants, which signalling pathway is used, and which biochemical components are involved. I think that this information is important for any scientist who looks for ozone resistance, an important field in applied plant biology. My first trial was to look in the index (as recommended by the editor). The index is only in volume 3 and is really exhaustive as it is 90 pages long. In the index the keyword ozone has 22 subentries, most of them refer to definitions, CFCs, atmospheric depletion, etc. Only the entry “stress responses” seems to be appropriate. However, on this page, now in volume 2, the effect of polyamines in stress response is described with a short notice that “high ozone levels induce a number of biochemical alterations, which are defensive against oxidative stress”. The next step of this excursion is to visit the chapter on oxidative stress. This is easy to find because at the end of the polyamine chapter the reader finds a reference. Now examing volume 1, there is no headline giving a hint where information on ozone is hidden. The paper with seven pages does not contain any information about ozone at all. The next turn of the hide-and-seek game guides one to the entry “Plants and the Environment”, a subchapter on ozone depletion, again in volume 2. Here the stratospheric processes are described in detail (very comprehensively and soundly), but the biological effects are restricted to UV-B action on plants. Browsing to the next potential source we arrive in the chapter “Plants and Atmospheric Pollution”. Here again, very good information about acute or chronic injury and effects on biomass by any pollutants including ozone, however, no information about the underlying mechanism. At the end I simply gave up.
In conclusion, the individual chapters are excellent, but any reader who looks for specific information needs time for browsing or good luck. The price is high, but the quality of printing is also high. Therefore, the three volumes should be recommended to biotechnology industries and research institutions or libraries. Private persons will be hindered mainly by the price.
